by Christopher Ford
ages: 11+

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Review copy provided by the publisher

First off: this is the second in a series. I have no idea how I ended up on a list to have this one sent to me — I didn’t request it! — but I’m sure glad I did. I’m definitely going to find the first one now.

For this reason alone: it is one of the more clever interpretations of mythology that I’ve seen in a long, long time.

It’s been forever and a day since I’ve read the Odyssey, and I don’t remember squat from it. The good news: you don’t really need to have read it to enjoy this one. In fact, you don’t really need to have read the first one in the series, either. I’m sure it helps if you have, but it’s not truly necessary.

What I really liked was the combination of Greek mythology, a really cool adventure story, and base humor. Maybe it’s because I’ve been reading a for a long(ish) time this weekend, but I found lines like “I am Artemis, the Huntress Goddess of this forest and all wild things including bears!” and “I’m so hungry, all I’m pooping are farts!”  and “Did you dim, little mortals EAT my beloved sheepies?” to be really funny. (They are in context, promise.)  This graphic novel has Boy written all over it. Not that I minded.

As for the art: the stick figures (because it’s the Stickman Odyssey) work. Honest. It’s not great art, but it’s a gimmick, and in this situation, it’s a good one. It’s silly, it’s fun, it’s interesting, and maybe it’d even get someone to look up who the heck Nyx is.

Here’s to more Stickman adventures!

The Dark Knight Returns, Dark Knight Triumphant, Hunt the Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Falls
by Frank Miller/Klaus Janson/Lynn Varley
and
Batman: The Killing Joke
by Alan Moore/Brian Bolland/John Higgins
ages: adult
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My husband picked up these comics, first run, back in the mid-1980s and has kept them in pristine condition (yes, in plastic sleeves) ever since then. He has been after me to read them since the first Dark Knight movie came out in 2005, and since my only frame of reference for Batman was the movies (yes, I did see the ones with Michael Keaton, though I’d bailed by the time George Clooney took a turn), I agreed. And then stuck the comics on my shelf for years.

So. Since the last of the three movies is coming out this year, I told Hubby that I’d finally get around to reading them. And as I was hunting around for something to read, he reminded me of my promise.

I’m not really going to give a plot summary, since I’m not sure I really comprehend fully what went on, but how about some thoughts:

1. The Killing Joke is totally the 1989 movie. Tim Burton totally ripped if off. That said, it was a pretty intense stand-alone comic. I liked the interplay between Batman and the Joker, the ways in which they were connected. And, honestly: the Joker scared the heck outta me.

2. The other four were fascinating. I liked the idea of Batman being older — in his 50s — and coming back to the… gig… after a long time away. I liked the use of the old villains — Harvey Dent and the Joker — mixed in with newer ones. I liked the interplay between Batman and his third Robin (first one left, second one died), a 13-year-old girl named Carrie Kelley. That made for some interesting dialogue, especially since he kept trying to fire her.

3. I liked the constant discussion going on in the background about whether or not Batman was “good” or “bad.” As Hubby pointed out when we were talking about this, he’s both. And that’s what makes him interesting.

4. What really surprised me was the role that Superman played. I guess it’s common knowledge in the comic book world, but obviously people showed up in others comics. And the interactions between the two superheroes are quite fascinating.

And from all this, I saw just how much Christopher Nolan respects and uses the Frank Miller comics as his inspirations for the movies. Which leads me to two conclusions: 1) the movie will be pretty awesome, and 2) don’t expect it to have a happy ending.

Amulet, vol. 4
by Kazu Kibuishi
ages: 9+
First sentence: “Who are you playing against?”
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Others in this series: The Stonekeeper, The Stonekeeper’s Curse, The Cloud Searchers

Emily and her friends and family are on a quest: one to figure out what the stone Emily wears around her neck really means, one to help overthrow the elf king. They’ve found the cloud city, Cielis, where they thought they would find answers. But, instead, there are only more questions. Emily’s friends and family are separated and imprisoned (although the robots, Miskit and Cogsley, find an old, exiled stonekeeper to give us some much-needed backstory) while Emily is taken by the council, and subjected to “testing”: a virtual game in which if you die, you don’t come back.

Things aren’t good in Cielis, and the answers Emily is seeking for aren’t going to be found. Instead, there are just more questions.

I said, after I finished the third book, that I really needed to stop reading this. And yet, when I saw that the fourth one had come out, I went, “OOOOH, AMULET!” and picked it up. And, when I finished this one, I had the same reaction: Kibuishi just isn’t writing/drawing these as fast as I want him to. I want answers! I want to know the rest of the story! I want to know where this is all going! (I couldn’t remember what had happened!) It’s so engrossing, so well-done, amazingly drawn, that I could just get caught up in it, reading until the story is done. Except it’s not there yet.

*sigh* Waiting until the next book comes out.

by Matt Phelan
ages: 9+
First sentence: “It all began, as many great adventures begin, with a story.”
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It’s the late 19th century, and the time is ripe for exploration, adventure, new ideas. Over the course of 10 years, three different people, independently of each other, decide to make the voyage in Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days a reality. Each chooses a different method of transportation, each takes a slightly different route, each has it’s own ups and downs.

Matt Phelan tells these three stories — Thomas Stevens, who traveled around the world on a bike (one of those old-fashioned ones with a big wheel); reporter Nellie Bly, who decided she would beat Verne’s story (and met Verne along the way); and sailore Joshua Slocum, who sailed the world, alone, in a schooner, at age 52 — in graphic novel form, simplifying them for his intended audience, and yet making them highly entertaining. I found myself interested in the stories and lives of these three, which is something that I didn’t expect to be.
 Out of the three stories, I found Thomas Stevens’ to be the most interesting. Around the world on a bike? Fascinating. But beyond the coolness of his traveling method, I thought Phelan’s art lent itself best to Stevens’ story. Nellie Bly’s worked okay, though I think a lot of the excitement and frustration she experienced were lost in the graphic novel form. And I didn’t follow Joshua Slocum’s story well at all. Perhaps that’s because as the stories went on, Phelan got more and more introspective, and it just wasn’t as interesting to me.  Or, perhaps I just suffered from the opposite: because it was a graphic novel, even though the art was grand, I felt like I was missing chunks of the story; I wanted more words, to fully understand what was going on.

But, overall, I’m glad I read it. It’s a good introduction to three little-known people who dared to adventure.

by Gene Luen Yang and Derek Kirk Kim
ages: 13+
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It seems a little strange to say that something called “The Eternal Smile” made me feel melancholy, but it did.

The book is three short stories, beautifully drawn, all muse upon the themes of belonging and purpose. They weren’t sad, exactly, and you can’t say they didn’t have happy endings, because they did. But they were bittersweet, edged with longing. Enough to make me melancholy.

I’m not quite sure which author wrote which story (or if they both wrote all three), since they drawing style for each one was so drastically different. That said, the art fit the stories perfectly. The first one, at first glance, seems to be a fantasy hero story: the downtrodden guy fights incredible odds (or in this case, revenge upon the king’s death by killing the frog king), only to find out that things aren’t exactly as they seem. The art is dark and brooding; it’s easy to sense that the end won’t be pretty.

The second story features animals: a greedy frog, who all he wants to do is get enough cash so he can put it in a barrel, dive in and never hit bottom; his toady (I think literally); and his two granddaughters. They come up with a scheme, based on this smile that the toady sees, and develop a religion based on it. Of course there’s more to it; it turns out that the story is nothing more than a children’s show. It’s a delightful poke at mega-churches, reality TV, and people who don’t have the backbone to say what they really think in the face of powerful people. And the art is bright and cheery, which perfectly juxtaposes the deeper, darker story.

The last story is the most heartbreaking, I think. It’s about a mousey woman, working in a cubicle for some large corporation. She wants a raise, and (of course) her boss deflects her and then laughs behind her back. Then she answers one of those “dear lovely, can you send $1,000,000 to help my family in Nigeria” emails. From there, they begin corresponding, and she imagines a whole story surrounding this mysterious African prince. Of course, things don’t work out, by any stretch of the imagination. The art is in shades of gray, the characters cartoonish, childish, which drives the somber point home more.

The one thing these stories do have, even with their melancholy, is that they make you think. About how things don’t always go as we planned. And that even so-called losers have dreams and aspirations. And how there is always hope, even in the face of hopelessness.

Which left me smiling, in the end.

by Hope Larson
ages: 12+
First sentence: “Hi, house.” (Though, admittedly, there are eight pages of pictures before that sentence.”)
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There are two stories going on here, both take place in a small town in Novia Scotia. One involves 16 year old Tara whose old family farm house has just burned down. Her mother is off to Alberta to look for work, and Tara is back in her old town (before they moved to the farmhouse, after her parents’ divorce) living with her aunt, uncle and cousin. She’s trying to adjust to a new life, and it doesn’t help that her mom wants to move to Edmonton.

The other story takes place 150 years ago: Josey is living in the farm house (the same one that burned down; you realize as the story unfolds that Josey and Tara are related), living her life. Her mother isn’t the most compassionate person, and her father isn’t the best farmer, but they’re making do. That is, until Asa Curry comes into their lives. He offers Josey’s father a way to get rich quick: there’s ore under the farmlands, and they can mine for gold. Things seem to be going well; Josey, at least, knows that she really likes Asa. But unfortunately, what is gold is not always good.

It’s an intriguing tale Larson is telling here, one that works well for the medium that it’s in. Sometimes I’m impressed how much can be “said” in a picture, how much one little frame can convey that would take pages and pages of prose to get across. I’m also impressed that something like magical realism, which bothers me in prose, I can accept and go with in a graphic novel. It’s a smattering of magic, something so innocuous that it shouldn’t really matter to the plot. And yet, it does.

It’s a good story as well: there’s heartache and loss and hope. My only question is wondering what Mercury has to do with the story. I missed that somehow.

That said, I’m going to be reading more of Larson’s work.

by Ben Hatke
ages: 9+ (though I read it aloud to my 5 year old)
First sentence: “Finders keepers!”
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What kid doesn’t want to go on an adventure? Excitement! Different worlds! Being the hero!

I’m not sure if Zita ever felt that way, but she got thrown into it one day, when she and her friend Joseph discovered a device with a button. Zita must be one of those curious types: she pushed the button… which opened a portal, and both she and Joseph got pulled through.

And thus the adventure begins. Joseph gets captured by an evil-looking tentacled beast, and Zita goes after him to save him. While he’s been tied up by the Scriptorians (on this unnamed planet), being expected to save the world from certain doom — an asteroid is headed their way — Zita experiences the world, meeting all kinds of unusual friends: a giant mouse, a robot named One who has delusions of grandeur; a nervous robot named Robby, who’s been hiding in the wastes; a beast named Strong Strong; and a man with magical tools named Piper. All who help her get to the Scriptorians’ castle to rescue Joseph.

It’s quite the adventure, one with clever drawings and story. It’s funny and sweet and adventurous. We couldn’t get enough of it; my girls and I were completely captivated are already clamoring for the next installment.

You can’t get better than that, I think.

by George O’Connor
Zeus: King of the Gods
First sentence: “In the time before time, there was nothing, Kaos.”
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Athena: Grey-Eyed Goddess
First sentence: “My sisters and I are the Moirae, also known as the Fates.”
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I don’t remember where I saw these two reviewed, but it sounded like an interesting approach to the stories of Greek mythology. So, as part of the Once Upon a Time challenge, I thought I’d give them a try.

To start with, these are beautifully drawn books. O’Connor imagines the gods in a way that’s both human and divine. They are larger than life — especially the Titans — but also very accessible. Zeus tells the story of the Titans, and Kronos (and I still can’t type these names without thinking of Percy Jackson!) as well as how Zeus came to be. The books aren’t interested in thinking about motivation of why they do things. It’s just the Gods, and they do things because they do.

Athena was the more interesting of the two books, however. Perhaps because Athena’s story is more interesting than Zeus’s? The book is framed as the Fates telling stories about Athena, including her origin story, which was fascinating (okay, it’s not one that I knew), as well as one about her fight with Pallas, the Aegis that she wears, and her quarrel with Arachne. No book on Athena would be complete without the Perseus and Medusa story, as well. The stories succinct without being choppy, and while it doesn’t give Athena a well-rounded personality, it does explain many of her different personality traits.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the books are the fact sheets at the back. They tell, playing card style, facts about the gods (which day of the week, which planet, Greek and Roman names, etc.). Fascinating stuff. O’Connor also provides a reading list, places to go to find out more information about the gods as well as Greek and Roman culture.

Well worth the time.